Ethnographic Research

From Key Concepts in EthnographyA case study investigates a few cases, or often just one case, in considerable depth. In ethnography, case studies are used in various ways to illuminate themes or draw inferences.

From Key Concepts in Social ResearchReflexivity is the practice of researchers being self-aware of their own beliefs, values and attitudes, and their personal effects on the setting they have studied, and self-critical about their research methods and how they have been applied, so that the evaluation and understanding of their research findings, both by themselves and their audience, may be facilitated and enhanced.

Research Methods

Fieldwork

From The A-Z of Social ResearchContent analysis involves the description and analysis of text in order to represent its content. This takes the form of enumeration, such as counting the frequency of words and the number of column inches, and more qualitative assessment of the words and terms used, as undertaken in certain forms of discourse analysis.

From Key Concepts in EthnographyFieldnotes are the written record of the observations, jottings, full notes, intellectual ideas, and emotional reflections that are created during the fieldwork process.

From Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural AnthropologyThere is a troubled relationship between the representation of anthropological fieldwork and the actuality of any particular fieldwork. In sober fact, fieldwork can take as many forms as there are anthropologists, projects, and circumstances.

From Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural AnthropologyThe method required extensive interviewing of named individuals in order to: (1) collect vital statistics among a non-literate population, and (2) record their pedigrees, which reflected rights and responsibilities relating primarily to descent, succession, and inheritance.

From The A-Z of Social ResearchInterviews are one of the most widely used and abused research methods. They provide a way of generating data by asking people to talk about their everyday lives. Their main function is to provide a framework in which respondents can express their own thoughts in their own words.

From Key Concepts in EthnographyParticipant observation is the main method of ethnography and involves taking part as a member of a community while making mental and then written, theoretically informed observations.